catching up with the boys

My 20 year high school reunion was last night. It was great. There was a huge turn out and I managed to talk to almost everyone who was there. I had great conversations with all the blokes I spoke to...even the ones who were not so nice at school.

I have to admit that I did have difficulties recognising a few of my fellow students. Some seemed to have aged a great deal while others were completely unrecognisable. Without the benefit of a name tag (and not wanting to sound rude for not reciprocating recognition), I left the night still unsure about who some of the people actually were.

Oh, and the most memorable moment of the night? Some drunk woman from another party tried to pick me up.

hanging about

I spent the day doing a major rehang of the art inside the apartment to accommodate some recent acquisitions. I've been saying it for a while now but I think I can now officially declare that I have no empty wall space left. And to think when I first moved in, I was hoping to achieve a more minimalist aesthetic.

blast from the past

I got an unexpected email this morning...from my grade 5 teacher. Admittedly, I didn't know who she was at first and it took a couple of email exchanges before I made the realisation.

Teacher (email 1): "This is just a query....did you attend [name of school] in Canberra?"

Me: "Hi Jennifer. Yes I did."

Teacher (email 2): "Think I taught you in year 5. Remember the feast your parents put on when you made communion." (everybody from year 5 remembers the feast).

Me: "Ahhh...yes...of course Miss [surname of teacher]."

What followed was a series of email exchanges where I learnt that she is still teaching, albeit at different school in NSW and that she has two boys aged in their 20s.

I remember my teacher being really skinny with big permed hair. She was a great teacher, very funny. I also remember learning about Australian history...I recall learning about Willem Jansz and New Holland and the gold rush and the Eureka stockade. She must have been a great teacher because I don't really remember much else from primary school.

reunion

I have my twenty-year (!!) high school reunion coming up in a few weeks. We didn't have a ten-year reunion. No one bothered to organise one. This time, however, one of the guys went to great lengths to contact people. There are about 50 signed up for the catch up drinks, which will take place on a Saturday night. The following day will be a family day and tour of the school. Although I signed up for the both events, I must admit to having some reservations. On the one hand, I'd like to think we were a pretty decent cohort so am looking forward to catching up with the boys. On the other, going to a reunion feels a bit like going backwards. I wonder if that is one reason why some folks choose not to go. Oh, and then there is the whole "I am gay " thing. Let's see how that goes down (I went to an all-boys catholic school where everyone, it seemed, was straight). I'm sure no one will give a shit but it might potentially crop up when conversations turn to marriage and kids.

Tea cup disaster

Our friend's daughter wanted a tea cup dog. I had not heard of tea cup dogs before but did some research. What I read was frightening and both Nathan and I tried to convince our friend that she shouldn't get one. She went ahead anyway. It did not end well. The dog died in transit. Very sad.

coffee for carnivorous plants

I recently added two new specimens to my 'collection' of tropical pitcher plants. They were bought on ebay following several weeks of unsuccessful bidding – until I worked out the sneaky tricks that ebay bidders use to win their bids (i.e. grossly overpaying in the last 10 secs before bidding ends).

Anyhow, I've had the two new plants for about a week and decided to give them a drink of coffee this morning. Yep, coffee. It seems that tropical pitcher plants are not only similar to humans in the need to eat, but they apparently also thrive when given an occasional hit of coffee.

Unfortunately, not any old coffee will do. They do not like instant coffee for instance. So...being a non-coffee drinker myself, I sent Nathan on a detour to pick me up a long black from Gloria Jeans when he was walking the dog yesterday. This morning I diluted the cold, day old coffee and gave each of the plants a drink. No notable changes yet...but give them a few weeks and evidently I can expect to see bigger leaves and traps.

pork bun postscript

Yum cha in Castlemaine wasn't too bad. The restaurant was tiny (the size of a small take-away shop). The pork buns were tasty (probably not 'the best in Australia', though still very good). But the best thing of all...all their dim sims were msg free which meant there were none of the post yum cha symptoms normally associated with an msg overload that come from dining in more conventional restaurants in the city.

Char sui bao in Castlemaine?

Am heading off to country Victoria again. This time, I'm going to Castlemaine with some friends from my PhD days (who have all ended up living and working in Melbourne). The plan is to catch the train in the mid morning and to get there by lunch. One of my friends has booked us into a restaurant that is suppose to have the best steamed pork buns (char sui bao) in Australia. Admittedly, I'm a bit sceptical. Not in country Victoria, surely? Will it be authentic or will it be "Aussie" char sui bao? I've been fooled before, most notably at the famous dim sim stall at the South Melbourne market... to me, the dim sims tasted like a sausage roll disguised in the shape of a dim sim and served with soy sauce. Let's see about the char sui bao...

picnic, metal baskets and a good duck

We decided to to have a picnic yesterday at the Flagstaff Gardens. We walked to the Vic Markets with the dog to buy some bread, dips and tapas. The threat of showers in the mid morning nearly ruined our plans. As we were leaving the markets, we felt a few drops of rain and had pretty much given up hope but by the time we reached the Gardens, the gloomiest of the rain clouds appeared to have moved on so we enjoyed our picnic after all.

In the early afternoon, I left Nathan and the dog at home and headed over to Fitzroy to check out this exhibition. I had met the artist last week when they were busy putting the works together but the gallery was a mess so it was nice to go there again and see everything up on the walls (or suspended from the ceiling as was the case with some of the pieces).

We roasted a duck for dinner. I entrusted Nathan to figure out how to use the duck fat to roast the crispiest potatoes (as I had earlier seen on a Jamie Oliver cooking show). It worked a treat. I also cooked up some purple cabbage with vinegar, fish sauce and sugar. It went very well with the fatty duck. I wished I had asked Nathan to take a photo before we devoured everything – but we couldn't wait. Must be more patient next time.

Canberra

Was back in Canberra over the weekend. I left on Friday and returned last night. I hadn't realised that Monday was actually a public holiday in the ACT: Family and Community Day.  What a wonderful excuse for a public holiday.

I went with my youngest sister to the Malaysian embassy on Saturday as they were having some sort of celebration/open day. After buying some traditional Malay desserts, we went for a walk around some of the other embassies and noticed that quite a few were open to the public that weekend. Here I am in front of the Finnish embassy.  

More generally, there seem to be a lot of activities going on in the nation's capital as part of its centenary celebrations. Though I missed it, Floriade this year was supposed to have had a centenary theme. The art gallery was also full of new pictures donated from various sources as part of its '100 works for 100 years' program.

I know Canberra is often described as sterile but I still have a soft spot for the place where I grew up.

dog attack

I took Truffs out for a walk yesterday morning around the Dcoklands. We made our way to a park near Woolworths. There were two other dogs in the park playing ball with their owners. Both dogs were off leash (even though there are no off leash areas in Docklands).

As we were making our way across the park both dogs ran over and one of them instantly set on Truffs and started biting her head and neck. The dog's owners and I were frantically trying to pull the dogs apart. All the while, Truffs was yelping.

We finally managed to separate them. The dog's owners, a lovely Asian couple, were apologising profusely and checking Truffs for any damage. Fortunately she didn't receive any (I think her thick fur saved her from serious injury).

Evidently the aggressor was a rescue dog and the new owners are trying to get it better socialised with other dogs. I think it still has a long way to go. Despite seeing Truffs attacked, I was empathetic to the owners (though they really should have had their dog on a leash or muzzled). Anyhoo..we had a nice chat.

As for Truffs, she got a treat from the aggressor's owner for the 'trauma' and almost instantly started wagging her tail at the owners' other dog. Seems like all was forgiven.

new acquisition

One of these is by an American artist and is owned by The National Gallery of Australia. The other was painted by an aboriginal artist and just entered my collection. Which is which?

tonight's dinner highlight...

....was a whole fried snapper at Longrain (photo courtesy of sis).

collecting my award

I got a teaching award yesterday. It was nice to celebrate it with Nathan and my youngest sis, who flew down from Canberra as my 'interstate' guest. The awards ceremony was held at the museum in the afternoon. Unfortunately I had to give a lecture so I was a bit concerned I'd arrive late but the traffic Gods were kind yesterday and my European driver (who doesn't seem to speak english) was very efficient getting me there.

We stayed for canapes after the ceremony. I think there is definitely a strategy to attracting the attention of waiters that are bringing out food (and I don't mean standing outside the kitchen). We used eye contact and a friendly smile that said 'come dither with the food' (see example below):

Afterwards, we headed off to dinner at the delightful Commoner. The food there was amazing. We ordered several dishes to share (the eel special and the pumpkin are illustrated). All photos courtesy of my sis. 

Off to Canberra on the weekend. Looks like I just missed fellow blogger Andrew.

F.U.

So, The University of Ballarat is going to be renamed Federation University. Seriously? FU?

ballarat

We went to Ballarat yesterday for the day with some friends. Beautiful city. We had a lovely lunch at the Craig's Royal Hotel  and wandered around the Art Gallery. It was a lovely day. The only dampner was our v-line ticket purchased for $24.80. We subsequently found out we could have paid just half that amount had we used a myki (being a weekend)....Such an amazing price disparity. It was clearly more of an issue for some of our friends than for us – judging by how much they were going on about it. As far as Nathan and I were concerned...it's not worth sweating the small stuff. You live and learn for next time.

competition

I was lying on the couch this morning with the lap top, reading the news. I think the dog felt neglected and started competing for my attention...

wow...what a week

Some working weeks are quite unremarkable. This past week was not one of those.

I had a student collapse in one of my lectures on Monday. He was unconscious for several minutes and an ambulance had to be called. I thought about cancelling the class but the paramedic suggested it would be best to continue. I ended up delivering the lecture while the three paramedics were assessing the student at the front of the lecture theatre. Thankfully the student was ok.

Today, I had a different kind of 'remarkable'. I spent the day with a production crew who were filming me for a short documentary. It's a fascinating process but I'm not sure if I will ever feel 100% comfortable in front of the camera. This crew was much more enjoyable to work with than my last filming experience where I had to stare at the cameraman's arm and pretend that I was looking at the interviewer (who couldn't actually make it in person and interviewed me by phone)...that interview was such a disaster that I was too embarrassed to watch it on TV (and no, the fact the cameraman had a decent bicep didn't help).

weekend

Aside from the terrible election result, I had a fantastic weekend. I got to catch up with a friend on Saturday for brunch, and took the dog to my favourite dog park in North Carlton today (which happens to be right nearby my favourite pub restaurant).

Canberra

Nathan and I just got back from Canberra. I went up on Wednesday and spent a couple of days doing some gardening – first at mum and dad's place and then at my sister's. It was nice to be out of the office and doing some outdoor work in the sun. Nathan flew up on Friday. My Melbourne-based sister and brother-in-law drove up and arrived on Friday night. We celebrated grandma's 91st birthday on Saturday and took dad out for father's day lunch today. I feel energised for the week ahead, which is just as well...I begin teaching first year students on Monday.